we've come together under the leadership of mark lowcock and issued very specific guidelines for how to prepare in these situations and i know that the u.n. country teams are working very very hard all around the world to support governments and support n.g.o.s in providing better services to those populations but. it needs to accelerate and that is what the humanitarian appeal is about today we need to excel. in our efforts to play protect these highly vulnerable individuals and by doing that by giving more space by giving better services by improving sanitation and hygiene we will not only fight call with 1000 in these situations but offer these people the dignity the respect and the help that they deserve and what about countries where conflicts are taking place countries like syria or yemen how what risk are the populations there. very well obviously similarly at risk given their own individual vulnerability given the collapse and breakdown of health services and given the difficulty in accessing them when there is an epidemic. and we've just spent a year and a half in northern c

emergency relief coordinator says the coronavirus situation in syria is just the tip of the iceberg mark lowcock made the comments of a virtual briefing to the united nations security council there are 10 known cases in syria there are fears the virus could spread quickly or go undetected or diplomatic editor james bays reports. because of course the seat of the u.n. security council is new york this was a virtual meeting a video conference of security council ambassadors it wasn't public but the briefings that were given to them by senior u.n. officials were made public they heard from 2 senior u.n. officials from the emergency relief coordinator marc local who said the situation in syria was very concerning even though the number of cases wasn't very large at this stage he believed it was the tip of the iceberg he reminded them that after a decade or nearly a decade or more in syria half of the hospitals and medical facilities in the in the country were not operational he also reminded them how vulnerable the population were one example he gave of that in the northwest of syria among displaced